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Comment by gruez | Hacker News Reader

>but the moment regular folks start getting in on the fun and they post a pic of themselves being surveilled on twitter suddenly it's time to shut everything down?

There's a pretty big difference between using it for its intended purpose (ie. monitoring traffic), and the alleged behavior that the department of transportation was opposed to.

>Office of Legal Affairs recently sent a cease-and-desist letter to Morry Kolman, the artist behind the project, charging that the TCP "encourages pedestrians to violate NYC traffic rules and engage in dangerous behavior."

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> There's a pretty big difference between using it for its intended purpose (ie. monitoring traffic), and the alleged behavior that the department of transportation was opposed to.

What's the point of having it public then? The department of transportation is already using that data for monitoring traffic so there's zero need for anyone else to replicate their work. The value in making that data public isn't so that Joe Average can track traffic volume over time just like the DoT is already doing. It's for transparency and so that the public can find new and innovative uses for the information our tax money is already being spent on gathering.

There's no point if we're not allowed to use that data in new ways and we don't need the kind of "transparency" that only applies as long as the public isn't looking.

If a specific use is actually dangerous then that can be dealt with on a case by case basis, and it's arguable that they were right to send a cease and desist letter to this website, but making the data itself unavailable over it would be an overreaction

This seems to happen every time some stuffy SeriousAgency or SeriousCompany opens something up to the public. The public decides to use it in a way that they didn't think of, and they respond by clutching their pearls, panicking and shutting it down, instead of just going with it.

SeriousCompany: "Look how cool and in tune we are with the public, here's this resource that you can all use. High five! [...] Oh, wait, no, what you're doing is bad for our image... No, stop, we didn't mean for you to do... No, don't enjoy it that way... Wait, stop, we didn't think of that at all! Oh, god no you're using it to post Amogus Porn! SHUT IT DOWN!!!"

> public decides to use it in a way that they didn't think of, and they respond by clutching their pearls, panicking and shutting it down, instead of just going with it

Because it prompts a serious question: why are taxpayers paying for this?

Why are taxpayers paying to enjoy the thing they paid for?

You just quoted that the public is using it - isn't that why we pay for it?

> the public is using it - isn't that why we pay for it?

For entertainment. I'm not saying it's a good reason. But I could absolutely see "why are we paying millions of dollars to fund someone's Tik Tok" play well in an election.

While you'll always find some people who don't think taxes should pay for anything ever in this case I think there's clear value in the DoT monitoring traffic volumes so the cameras already exist. It's not as if there's some huge cost for those camera feeds to be put online where the public can easily access them. The footage that those cameras capture already belongs to the taxpayers. They are a public record (although short lived since it doesn't look like the government is saving the footage). The taxpayers should have easy access to their own records and they should have the freedom to make use of those records.

> not as if there's some huge cost for those camera feeds to be put online

But there is a cost. If it’s not used by 90% of voters, and its trivially use is made known to 60% of them, you have the votes to reällocate those funds.

> footage that those cameras capture already belongs to the taxpayers. They are a public record (although short lived since it doesn't look like the government is saving the footage). The taxpayers should have easy access to their own records and they should have the freedom to make use of those records

They are a public record because we make them public. And taxpayers fund plenty of non-public information collection. That you wouldn’t vote for something doesn’t make it electoral impossible (nor even not good politics).

But sometimes SeriousCompany says "we'll provide this public resource so people can do X, Y, and Z", and then someone does A and gets a cease and desist?

It's an open resource, sure, but the provider of the resource can still set limits on its use, even after it's been available for some time. Often that includes things like "don't use our free resource to make yourself money".

That seems like an entirely reasonable request to me?

Something being freely available does not inherently grant you the right to use it however you'd like. It's pretty unhelpful to conflate the two things.

You’re conflating a license to use something granted without charge and something actually free to the public. Licenses come with terms, public resources only come with social pressures of fair use.

It is unfair for SeriousCompany to pretend that resources it releases to the public (usually as a PR move or to advertise a paid product) must flatter their motives and the narrow confines of what they envisioned the public might use them for. That is wishing a free resource had a license when it only has a social contract. If the provider could set limits, it would no longer be free.

I mean, a license to use something for free can still apply to something that is freely given? There's no conflation, since they're just different aspects of the same thing

And no, that's not unfair, that's absolutely within their rights, as the provider of said thing. What's unfair is willfully taking advantage of a free resource in ways that are explicitly against the reasons the provider is providing the thing in the first place. That's just place malice at that point.

After all, a license is just a social contact that can actually be enforced. I would argue the world would be a far better place if people didn't abuse the unenforceable nature of what you're calling "just a social contract".

> What's the point of having it public then? The department of transportation is already using that data for monitoring traffic so there's zero need for anyone else to replicate their work.

Personally I do find it useful to be able to glance at the NYC traffic cams as a supplement to traffic maps, not only because having an actual visual on the traffic can help me decide on a driving route better than red or green map lines or a routing algorithm I know will take me on an inferior path to “avoid” perceived traffic, but also because the cameras pick up other nearby stuff. I like to go on runs over the Brooklyn Bridge, but it’s so swarmed with tourists most of the time that I’ll check the DOT cameras so I can see if the pedestrian path is clear enough to run on without being clotheslined by a selfie stick.

I also spend a lot of time north of the city, and the state highway traffic cams are great for checking the plowing status during/after winter storms before setting off for a trip.

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